In many business- or professional-related situations or the like, an age-old and recurring problem is effectuating contact between a professional or the like and a client or the like calling or otherwise attempting to contact the professional. Perhaps ideally, the client would place a telephone call or the like to the professional, the professional would answer the placed telephone call instantaneously if not within a matter of moments, the desired contact would thus be established, and the caller and professional could communicate regarding some matter of interest. Notably, however, most professionals are not always available to answer all calls instantaneously or even momentarily. For example, the professional simply may not want to answer calls, such as for example if on a vacation or at a family event, among other things, or the professional may be otherwise occupied by professional matters.
With regard to the latter case in particular, it may be that a doctor may be occupied by a medical matter and unavailable, or a lawyer may be in a legal conference from which she or he is not to be disturbed. Likewise, a funeral director may be attending to a first client while a second client is calling. In such a particular situation as well as others, it should be noted that not only is the funeral director otherwise occupied by the first client, but the nature of the funeral business is such that it would be considered to be particularly insensitive if not rude to answer the call from the second client while still attending to the first client.
Generally, it is to be recognized that a professional or the like may not always be immediately available to answer a call or other message from a client (hereinafter, ‘call’), be it to a landline telephone line, a mobile telephone line, a pager, a mobile or immobile messaging/texting device, an application instantiated on any such device, or to such other communications device or applications thereon which may be available. As should be appreciated, such a situation can exist even when the client is calling regarding an urgent matter, such as a life-threatening matter or a matter that otherwise should be given immediate attention. Accordingly, it is known that such a professional may employ a business organization that provides answering services or the like (hereinafter, ‘an answering service’) to answer calls from clients when the professional is not immediately available.
As should be understood, a call to the professional is forwarded therefrom to the answering service by appropriate means when the professional is not available to answer such call or the like, and the answering service may perform a range of answering duties on behalf of the professional. For example, upon answering the call on behalf of the professional, the answering service may let the caller know when the professional is scheduled to be available, or may collect information so that the professional can return the call at an opportune time. Likewise, the answering service may perform an assessment regarding the nature of the call and based thereon may perform a range of actions. Thus, the answering service may determine that a relatively more serious matter requires more immediate action from the professional, in which case the answering service may attempt to contact the professional as soon as possible by appropriate means. Correspondingly, the answering service may determine that a relatively less serious matter requires less immediate action from the professional, in which case the answering service may only create a message for the professional to be collected thereby at a later time.
Answering services are known, as are answering services specializing in particular fields. For example, an answering service may be operated specifically for funeral professionals and based thereon may develop particular procedures tailored to the needs of such funeral professionals, as is shown by the subject matter set forth in U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,467,515, 8,498,399, and 8,548,149, each of which is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety, among others. Of course, answering services may also be operated specifically for other types of professionals and others, including doctors, lawyers, engineers, real estate agents, and the like.
Typically, a professional engages an answering service to answer calls to the professional, or one or more businesses to which the professional is associated each engage the answering service to answer calls to the business, among other things. In any case, the answering service engages the services of one or more telephone and/or data service providers or the like to effectuate forwarding of telephone and/or non-telephone calls or the like from the professional or each business (hereinafter, ‘professional entity’) to the answering service, particularly in a manner deemed necessary and/or advisable by the professional entity. Such engaging and such forwarding services are generally known and need not be set forth herein in any detail other than that which is provided. Generally, the forwarding may occur on any appropriate basis, including the time of day, whether forwarding has been positively engaged or disengaged, whether the professional entity has selected a particular call for forwarding, whether a call has rung a predetermined number of times, whether a call has not been responded to within a set period, whether a phone or phone system or data system of the business is off, or the like.
Notably, an agent of the answering service may answer an incoming call from a caller on behalf of a called professional entity according to a predetermined procedure or ‘script’ that has been established for the called professional entity. As may be appreciated, the agent can be a human or an automated construct. Also, the script can be quite involved, and can tend to cover a wide range of subjects, scenarios, and needs, and therefore can be quite extensive. Importantly, with the use of such a script, the agent can collect information from the caller/incoming call according to the script and enter same into an appropriate database or the like for later retrieval and use, as is generally known.
At some point during or after the incoming call from the caller, the agent at the answering service attempts to contact the called professional entity to relay at least some portion of the substance of the incoming call thereto. If the called professional entity is an individual professional, contacting same typically would involve calling, messaging, texting, or otherwise relaying to the professional information relating to the incoming call. Thus, it may be that the agent at the answering service contacts the individual professional by way of a phone call to a land line or mobile telephone having a telephone number associated therewith, a text message to a mobile telephone having a telephone number associated therewith, a data message to a computer having an electronic mail address, user ID, Internet address, or other identifier associated therewith, a push message to an application running on such a mobile telephone, computer, or other computing device, or the like. Similarly, if the professional entity is a business, contacting same typically would involve contacting an individual professional associated with the business in a likewise manner, perhaps according to predetermined rules for the business setting forth whom to contact.
Once the answering service contacts a professional regarding an incoming call from a caller, the professional may decide to place a return call to the caller in response to the incoming call. Typically, although by no means necessarily, placing the return call may involve the professional ascertaining an identifier of the caller by which the caller may be reached during the course of the return call. For example, the identifier may be a telephone number, electronic mail address, texting address, Internet address, or other identifier associated with the caller, which the caller may have provided during the incoming call or which may have been automatically ascertained from the incoming call, or even both. At any rate, with the identifier of the caller ascertained, the professional employs same to carry out the return call, be it by way of a telephone, a texting device, an electronic mail device, an application running on a computing device, or the like, as may be appropriate.
Notably, in carrying out the return call, an identifier of the professional may likewise be ascertained by the caller, where similar to before the identifier of the professional may be a telephone number, electronic mail address, texting address, Internet address, or other identifier associated with the professional, which the caller may automatically ascertain from the return call. For example, if the return call is a telephone call and the caller employs a caller identification service, the identifier of the professional could be a telephone number of a telephone device employed by the professional, where such telephone number of the professional is automatically displayed to the caller and likely stored on a telephone device employed by the caller.
The professional likely is not especially concerned with hiding from the caller or otherwise obscuring the identifier of such professional, be it a telephone number or otherwise. In fact, the professional may wish to encourage providing the caller with an identifier of such professional so that the caller can later call the professional again, thereby promoting and/or otherwise encouraging a relationship therebetween, be it a business relationship or otherwise. That said, the professional may wish to have control over the identifier provided to the caller during the return call. For example, the professional may wish to ensure that the identifier provided to the caller represents a favored location at which the professional may be later called. Similarly, if the identifier which would be otherwise provided to the caller during the return call is a personal identifier that the professional wishes to keep private, the professional may wish to ensure that the identifier provided to the caller is a professional identifier that the professional employs publicly.
Likewise, it may be that the professional is an individual associated with a business, and that the business and/or the professional wishes to ensure that the identifier provided to the caller during the return call is a business identifier that the business encourages the use of for calls in general. Thus, the business can ensure with the provided business identifier that calls associated therewith are routed through the business so that the business can assert better control over the calls, and so that the business can appropriately further route the calls as need be, among other things. Accordingly, if the caller later calls for the professional by way of the business identifier, and if the professional is not available to the caller during such later call, the business may instead route such later call to another professional which can communicate with the caller and appropriately service the needs of the caller without delay, for example. Also, and as should be evident, by ensuring that later calls from the caller are routed directly to the business, the business is in general better aware of the needs of the caller and the relationship therewith, and thereby can better service such needs and such caller.
Accordingly, a need exists for a system and method for allowing a professional to control the identifier provided when returning a call or message or the like from an answering service. In particular, a need exists for such a system and method where, an application is provided to the professional that allows same to control the identifier. Further, a need exists for such a system and method where the application allows the professional to select from among a number of identifiers including one or more predetermined identifiers. Also, a need exists for allowing the return call to be routed by way of the answering service so that the answering service can provide additional services, such as recording the return call for purposes including business management review or the like, timing the return call, notifying a third party of the return call, or the like, among other things.